Pakistan Making Progress on Automation of Industry

Dec. 17, 2007 - PRLog -- Islamabad:-With portraying consistent progress in the information technology, Pakistan is now steadily automating particularly its development sectors to significantly enhance quality production and ensure skilled management, which would help the country in getting a good place in the global competitive market.

The sectors being automated under the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) include Readymade Garments, Hosiery, Textile Processing, Automotive Parts & Accessories, Surgical Instruments and Agriculture. Under this project the ERP software is being implemented in more than 70 industrial units of these sectors.

For further strengthening its development sector through the automation system, the Government of Pakistan is vigorously entering into memorandums of understanding to involve a number of national as well as international software firms.

By securing recent rapid 7 per cent growth rate and 800 percent increase in its stock market, Pakistan’s key step is to build a bridge to Silicon Valley and the country is rapidly making inroads in the international market with stepping up its links with recognized world brands.

Millions of rupees have been spent in automating the local industry and in the first phase 63 units have been automated across different industrial sectors using licensed ERP software” Said Yusuf Hussain, Managing Director of Pakistan Software Export Board.

He said that in the current phase, close to 45 units in four industrial sectors and 10 farms from the agriculture sector are being automated using open source as well as Microsoft technologies. The AutoPlus is the second open source ERP launched under PSEB’s Industrial Automation Project and this ERP software is now also available on Microsoft technologies to more than 300 units.

With tapping the full potential of this automotive system, Pakistan would be able to compete much better in the increasingly competitive global market as the initial results of this initiative are very encouraging.

According to a compiled report, the installation of the automotive system in these units has led to improvement in their overall performance – 60 per cent reduction in time in customer response, 65 per cent slash in time and HR in the purchase cycle, 60 per cent cut in time and HR in accounts and 75 per cent reduction in time and HR in the production process.

PSEB is a Government agency mandated to promote Pakistan’s IT industry including software, services, hardware and call centres locally and globally. It has been facilitating the IT industry through its programmes in human capital, office space, marketing, company capability development, telecom bandwidth, industry finance, public policy, strategy & research, and facilitation. The IT industry of Pakistan is currently valued over USD 2.8 billion with an IT workforce of 110,000, growing at almost 20,000 a year. There are more than 125 ISO certified and CMMI rated IT firms in Pakistan.

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